


Holy (?)

by HaroThar



Series: Gamzeeweek2019 [2]
Category: Homestuck
Genre: M/M, Religion, Religious Conflict, Religious Discussion, Religious Guilt
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-21
Updated: 2019-05-21
Packaged: 2020-03-09 03:39:53
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,551
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18908788
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/HaroThar/pseuds/HaroThar
Summary: Gamzee weighed the values of his church, and found his own religion wanting.





	Holy (?)

**Author's Note:**

> *projects my own fucked up relationship with religion onto the clown* Hey everybody how's it going

“Penance, brother,” the priest explained while Gamzee knelt. “Penance for our sins and misdeeds. Penance for each time that we ourselves are the unfunny motherfuckers. We are punished for the mirth of our gods, as it is motherfucking noble to suffer in their names.”

Gamzee trembled on the floor, looking at the ceremonial whip in the priest’s hands, dyed purple after centuries. 

“Brother,” Gamzee said, voice small in his own ears, “Ain’t the holy sister preach that we should love and be kind one another? That we should nurture laughter and not—“

“Silence,” the priest said sharp, but not loud. Didn’t need to be. Silent Gamzee went. He sighed. “You are young. You do not yet understand these things. But you must never, ever, _ever_ question the words and orders of our gods. Not ever, do you understand?”

Gamzee nodded, eyes wide. 

“Good. And though you knew it not, a line you did just cross, my little brother.” The whip uncurled from his hand, skimming along the floor. “Eight more I add to your penance. Eight, the least holy of numbers. As is rightful punishment for the mouth that acts out of its line. Shirt off.”

The priest’s tone was gentle, for all he was ordering Gamzee to do. Gamzee took his shirt off silently, letting it bunch around his wrists where his hands pressed to the floor. His naked tits hung from his chest with gooseflesh in new cold, back shivering and twitching in fearful anticipation of what was to come.

“It hurts worst the first time,” the priest said, rounding Gamzee, voice soft and sympathetic-like. “But worry not, little brother. One night the time will come for you do this to your own self, and you will take a holy, purifying pleasure in it.”

Gamzee felt the tears budding up, and the first strike ain’t even come yet.

“And that is all this is, little brother. The purification of our wretched bodies.”

The whip struck.

—

The next time Gamzee felt bold enough to speak was in a candle-lit side room, an older sister with corkscrew horns spiraling out horizontal from her skull at his back, rubbing disinfectant as did sting all through his bloody skin. She was chatting idle at him, noise to fill the silence, and Gamzee listened with downturned ears, hugging his own arms. 

“These should leave some real nice scars,” sister was saying, “none of ‘em are deep enough to need stitches, so we can leave ‘em be, and as long as you don’t keep ‘em too moisturized and avoid massages for a while, they should keep real motherfuckin’ prominent a long time.” She sounded delighted by it.

“Ain’t scars the sort of thing to avoid, when they ain’t won in fighting?” Gamzee asked, knowing he shouldn’t question his gods, but that didn’t mean he couldn’t ask questions at all, right?

“Not for us!” the sister said, her paint a cheery mask of triangles and two temple circles. “They are proof of our dedication! It is an honor to serve our gods through our suffering. Check out mine!” she boasted, turning her back to Gamzee and shedding her vest, a criss cross web of scarring coating the whole of her adult-blackened back. Gamzee figured his would look like that, some night. The thought made him want to cry again.

“Easy, brother,” the sister crooned, buttoning her vest again and crouching on her haunches before him. “It only looks scary. Don’t worry, penance is infrequent, as long as you do as you’re told. Most of us just get the annual penance to keep our minds humble and our bodies pure. And to touch up our scarring,” she added with a wink, half-playful and meant to cheer. “This is a _good_ thing.” She cradled Gamzee’s face between her palms, and Gamzee leaned in, seeking that comfort which was novel and strange to him. “All we do, for the mirth of our gods.”

“For the mirth of our gods,” Gamzee echoed obediently, and the sister placed a kiss to his brow.

“Go tell Brother Chuckles that you’re all patched up. He likes to touch base with you little ones afterwards, them first couple of sweeps.”

Gamzee did _not_ want to go touch base with the man who’d just finished whipping him, but he didn’t want to be punished for disobedience either, so he went. The brother had cleaned the whip and was settling it back in ceremonial place. 

“Sir?” Gamzee said softly, an intrusion, too prominent, sticking out even in this place where he’d been told to be.

Brother Chuckles smiled at him soft. “Little brother,” he said, voice so kind and soft in Gamzee’s ears and pan, urging him to gentle down and be soothed. “All taken care of?”

Gamzee nodded, gripping at the shoulder of his shirt. His back hurt so bad.

“Little brother,” Chuckles repeated, “ _Gamzee,_ come here,” he said with outstretched arms. His voice was gentle enough to shatter Gamzee. He went, crossing the freshly painted floor (painted in blood of his _own_ ) and paused hesitantly just outside the brother’s reach, wondering briefly if he misunderstood what the priest was meaning to be about, but then settling himself in the arms of another.

“You did very well today,” the priest said, wrapping large, black arms around Gamzee, and Gamzee _did_ start to cry, this time. Slow, his own hands came up, then clutched desperately at the priest’s shirt, clinging to him heavy and pressing his face into the brother’s shoulder. Chuckles’ arms hurt so bad where they wrapped over Gamzee’s wounds, but he couldn’t even care, as he was being _held._ As he was being _praised._ As the brother murmured and shooshed at him and pet his hair with taloned fronds and assured him it was all over, he was safe, he’d done well, the family would take care of him. Gamzee clung to this brother like his lusus had never let him cling to him, and the priest did take it all in gentle stride.

“Oh, Gamzee, little brother, how good you’ve been.”

—

Gamzee’s first adult relationship was a matter of subservience and giving, as most his relationships had been before. Gamzee always subservient. Gamzee always giving. And his brother as would just take and take and take, until finally one of Gamzee’s old pupahood friends did talk enough sense into Gamzee’s bravery to break it off with the brother, who did leave Gamzee ghosted and discarded, just as Gamzee had always feared he would.

—

Things funny about the holy church was the more Gamzee studied the red colored words of his brother god, the more sex and talk thereof it felt… bad. Like holding fronds with a brother was too salacious. Like giving affection the type romantic was reserved solely for the behinds of doors. Gamzee read and studied and did as his gods and priests did order and guide him to, but he felt even somehow _scared_ of sex like he never had, when he never did know better. But he was a good follower, a good faithful, a good clown entertaining his gods. He had to be, it was the whole of his identity, the thing he got most praised for and most praised about. So all things as weren’t the most prudish of kissing, he locked away in a deep, fucked up place in his own pan, only to fantasize with great guilt about. Online, he could find others as were like him, as liked thoughts and stories and fantasies of being pinned down and fucked hard, of being used as a bucket and then cuddled and comforted after. Siblings who spun tales of blindfolds and made plays of ropes. 

And then, Gamzee would lift his own whip, made special by and for him, and he would take the penance on his own. Such sins were not meant to be shared in the paint room.

—

There were inconsistencies in the holy book.

Gamzee knew better than to make mention of them.

But he thought on them. He thought on them often. Weighed what he felt in his pusher as was telling him to be doing, weighed what his brothers and sisters and siblings did teach and preach and guide him towards.

Weighed, and found his own religion wanting.

But Gamzee knew better than to make mention. Here was the only family he’d ever had. The only friends, only people as would hive with him, would share in joys and sorrows with him. He only kept one friend from his pupahood, and weren’t sure he could handle being so lonely, rejected by his family and left alone, arms empty with none to hold him neither. The whole of his life was based on this religion, how could he leave it?

But the inconsistencies did persist, and his pan did not cease in ruminating on them.

—

He still went to church each fifth day. Still painted his face and sung the hymns. Still juggled and painted and made puns.

But his pusher weren’t in it no more. He kept the religion in hopes it would make sense, somehow, some way, because he did, he loved his gods. He loved the green god, with her levity and kind claws. He loved the power of the red god, the righteous punishment upon the mirthless motherfuckers as Gamzee did deem unworthy.

But Gamzee kept to his own self the shift in his perspective. That the green god’s levity should be shared with all colors of the hemospectrum. Even bronze. Even rust. Even the yellow beggar whose brain was hooked up to machines. Even the olive sibling Gamzee’s family called whore. That the red god’s justice should smite down upon the cruel, not the lawless. Even laws could be unfair. Even criminals could act in goodness, if given understanding. Even the lawful could deserve penance for their atrocities conducted.

The penance, too, he rejected. The guilt, he began shed that heavy burden. He was done feeling guilty for his fantasies. Done hurting himself for crimes made by his earnest heart. He forgave himself the sins he’d been taught to abhor in his own doing and granted himself his own mortal imperfections, stepping down from the pedestal he’d tried to place himself on. 

He made friends with those motherfuckers as he’d lost contact with. Some, he decided it was best he’d not spoken with them in sweeps, and he left those sleeping barkbeasts to lie. But some he struck chords with, remembering how much he’d enjoyed them and delighting in how much they’d changed and grown since last he’d spoken. Some brothers, he remembered how dearly he had loved, how he’d pitied and hated and cherished.

He never stopped with his church. Never stopped attendance, or keeping with his family. But he let himself some distance so as to breathe. Remade friends outside his religion and tried to unshackle the guilt he’d chained himself to.

And he let himself question things.

—

There were none as he could dialogue with, his life and his _questioning_ too shapeless against the finished painting of his faith, so he dialogued with himself. Monologued. Motherfucking whatever. Asked himself if the gods he’d been taught on were the gods as made hive in his pusher, and followed them, not the written words as branded him. He did keep the brand he’d chosen, though, scorched skin of “Joyous laughter to all our siblings” along his forearm, written in plain Alternian but important, still, to him. The words had new meaning, now. He meant the “all.” All his siblings, every last one of them. And so he gave his clownery to all he did adore, and argued endless with himself on what was right, and what was true, and what it was he did do.

—

“Hey, Gamzee,” his heart greeted him at the start of their date. Tavros was everything Gamzee was forbidden, in a matesprit. Bronze, faithless, kind to animals, sweet but also fair to all other trolls, and he fucked like a beast in heat. 

“Hey Tavbro. What’s the wicked plan for tonight?”

Tavros groaned and leaned on Gamzee. “A day in? I’ve had a long night.”

Gamzee kissed Tavros gentle, then wiggled his eyebrows. “Will you be _in_ me today?”

Tavros snickered and slipped a hand up under Gamzee’s shirt. “Maybe. Do you, want me in you?”

“Brother, I think you full well know the motherfuckin’ answer to _that.”_

“Could you two _please_ for the love of _fuck_ even _consider_ getting a block before you start talking like this? Please? For the sake of my fucking aural sponges?”

“Sorry Karbro,” Gamzee drawled, not sounding sorry in the slightest. He was rewarded by one of his own bike horns bouncing off his skull-horn, and he honked out his laughter. 

“Karkat, why don’t you, uh, go flirt with your own matesprit?” Tavros asked with the biggest shit eating grin. “Oh, wait.”

“Tavros I swear to fuck on everything that is I will fucking pull out your intestines through your oversized asshole of a mouth you fucking prick that’s fucking low!!! Maybe I’d have a matesprit if I didn’t hang out around fucking tools like you every fucking night goddamn you insensitive fuck!!!”

Tavros laughed at Karkat’s expense, and Gamzee joined in, quieter, not wanting his moirail’s ire on him. But shit if Tavros’ jokes weren’t funny.

“You’re a pair of fucking assholes. Congratulations. You’re fucking perfect for each other.”

“Sorry, best friend,” Gamzee said at the same time Tavros said, “We _are.”_

Karkat muttered more grumbling and mumbling under his breath, and Gamzee would be tempted to go pap him down if it weren’t for the fact that Tavros’ palm was being all kinds of up and motherfucking distracting over his belly and grubscars right then.

“Hey,” Tavros rumbled, low and sweet as sex.

“Hey,” Gamzee echoed, purple and breathless.

—

He burned the whip.

He’d considered a long while, giving it to Aradia, as did actually use them for meaning and purpose.

But this felt better. Righter. To burn it. To be rid of it. To watch the thing he’d made with his own two hands flicker out into ash in the moonlight on the seashore, never to hurt him nor anyone else again.

“Gamzee?” Karkat asked, speaking only after the whip had burned all down into embers and firedust.

“Best beloved?” Gamzee muttered, lips slurring over the syllables. He felt cold. He’d been outside in short sleeves for too long, again.

“Are you… fuck.”

“Hurts,” Gamzee said, and it wasn’t _fair_ that it did. That this thing he had hurt himself with for so long was burned up and gone forever, and that it hurt him to see it go, even as he felt the necessity of it intense and deep in his bones.

Maybe this was what was meant, in pain being purifying. Maybe this feeling, the one hurting his pusher and eyes, was where that had hatched from. That something as hurt him so bad to witness would be, in the long run, a way to cleanse himself of wounds made on his soul.

Karkat’s arms came around him, tight and reassuring and _family_ and _hive_ and Gamzee cried, clinging to a black sweater, face pressed to the crook of his lover’s neck, held tight in arms that cared for him.


End file.
